Walter Cronkite Set The Standard, Say Canadian News Anchors
Posted July 18, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Walter Cronkite cast as long a shadow over Canadian television news as he did over U.S. journalism, Canada’s two best-known TV anchors said late Friday, shortly after word of the legendary CBS newsman’s death at the age of 92.
“He had a great effect on all anchors over the last 40, 50 years,” said CTV National News anchor Lloyd Robertson.
“Really all anchors…since then have been measured against Walter Cronkite … He set the standard…all of us were gauged on: could we be trusted, did we have his respect for the facts.”
Peter Mansbridge, longtime anchor with CBC’s “The National,” concurred.
“He set the bar, very, very high,” Mansbridge said.
Cronkite was the anchorman’s anchorman – he defined the role in so many ways. When people like Cronkite started anchoring the news, they defined the way it would be done and still is done.”
Mansbridge never met Cronkite, but when the CBC anchor was a reporter in 1978 he once did a story that aired on the CBS Evening News, something he described as a “huge thrill.” “Sitting there watching it on the CBS Evening News and hearing Walter Cronkite say my name in the introduction was something that you were through the moon about it,” Mansbridge recalled with a chuckle.
“That was more than 30 years ago and I still have that tape, it’s one of the highlights of my career.”
Robertson said he met Cronkite three times during his career and found him very “charming.”
On one occasion, Robertson was hosting an event in Toronto where Cronkite was the featured speaker, and he addressed him very formally until his American counterpart put him at ease.
“I kept calling him Mr. Cronkite because I was so awestruck by him,” Robertson recalled.
“He finally turned me and said, ‘It’s all right, Lloyd, you can call me Walter.”‘
Cronkite’s longtime chief of staff said Cronkite died Friday evening of cerebral vascular disease.
Mansbridge and Robertson both agreed no other television anchor will likely ever be as dominant as Cronkite was during his heyday.
But Cronkite’s approach to his job, the way he shaped his newscast and talked to reporters will stand the test of time, Robertson predicted.
“If you look at the all news channels even now, the anchors participate, talk to reporters, they do interviews with guests,” Robertson said.
“The current news channels have extended the Walter Cronkite mode. I think he will live in our memories and television for a very long time to come.”
American news broadcaster and journalist Walter Cronkite talks on the phone in his office on his last day as the anchor of the ‘CBS Evening News,’ New York, New York, March 6, 1981. (CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images)
